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An authentic photo surfaced Friday afternoon capturing the bright light seen by dozens of Southern California sky watchers.
About 50 people contacted the American Meteor Society on Thursday with reports of a "green fireball" lighting up the sky. Sightings were reported in Ventura, Anaheim, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, Paso Robles, San Francisco and Santa Barbara, according to the group's website.
Photographer Susan Lary of the Southern California Weather Authority captured the so-called fireball and provided the image to NBC News.
Lary's photograph was taken with a 1-minute exposure in Lancaster, Calif., facing southwest.
"I saw a light and looked directly at the meteor as it came down in the ocean off Corona Del Mar. Bits came off, and it was bright white," Laguna Hills resident Patric Barry wrote in an email to NBC4.
Barry spotted the object out of his living room window about 10:35 p.m.
Read more from NBCLosAngeles.com
The sightings come days after Bay Area residents were treated to a light show of their own when a fireball was seen streaking across the sky.
Another fireball sighting was reported this month in Florida, but the most spectacular celestial event occurred when a meteor soared over Russia before the rock slammed into Earth's surface, sending shockwaves across a widespread area.
The sightings were reported as a 50-foot asteroid estimated to weigh 143,000 tons -- dubbed 2012 DA14 -- made an historic fly-by.
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Probably an asteroid loaded with copper? Certainly the Earth is moving through a hot spot of sorts with all the recent activity. Or maybe more people are just looking up.
It is more likely the meteor was composed of nickle, a more common material found in meteors.
http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/#5
Speculation about what caused the fireball is not sufficient. No where in the story does it actually explain what this green fireball was. Are we that prone to meteor events, which can be very destructive, and the gov. and astonomers know nothing about? Why do we pay for asteroid tracking if its impossible to track them? We'd be better off just building underground safe havens
More likely meteorites happen all the time, but now almost everyone has a camera phone or due to our paranoia, security cameras are virtually everywhere.
Within 12 hours of DA14 there were two major meteorites that caused damage ( Russia , Cuba) and three large meteors ( California, Florida, Middle east)
I don't think its a big deal or conspiracy but it drives me crazy when NASA keeps putting out statements like " these events are not related" "These are common events" "These meteors entered our atmosphere from different parts of space" These rocks could have easily rode around our gravitational pull to make them seem like they were from different parts of space. NASA is afraid to say "We don't know" because it will affect their budget.
These incidents were related (lex parsimoniae). Its not a big deal , but NASA is able to predict very little anymore. They are useless . Their time as an agency has come and gone. Its time to upgrade.
Kallie - NASA and other astronomers are able to determine that events are related or not. It is basic physics. If objects come from different parts of the sky and different directions, they are not related. Kind of like car accidents happening in a city. Just because you have multiple car accidents on the same day, does not mean they were all connected.
What we saw last Friday was simply coincidence and confirmation bias. The big meteor in Russia was rare and simply a coincidence. The other events, they are not so rare. But the fact that everyone was already paying attention to meteors in general, made those events seem even more significant than they actually are.
On the limited budget NASA and space scientists have, they have very successfully mapped a significant portion of larger, extinction level asteroids and found us to be safe for the present. The smaller stuff like what hit Russia is much harder to detect though. That difficulty coupled with them being less a threat for the moment to the entire planet, the focus hasn't been on discovering them. As technology, funds and such improve, they will get around to finding these too.
Samantha Tata and Olsen Ebright
None of the aforementioned events were meteorites, they were meteors. None of them hit the ground, which would make them a meteorite. The meteor in Russia exploded "15-32 miles above ground". The damage was caused by the shock-wave generated by the explosion of the 10,000 ton meteor. Had it hit the ground, it would have created a meteorite crater like the one in Arizona. The 1908 Tunguska event was also a meteor/comet (though larger) airburst about 5 miles above ground, flattening 820 square miles of trees (roughly the size of the incorporated City of Houston).
For goodness sake, you guys are reporters? Just a little research into your own recent archives will give you the correct facts. Y'all are getting paid, do I get a little something for setting you straight?
Tracking a 50' meteor through the utter blackness of space is like trying to track a gnat that hits your windshield at 70mph. Can't be done. They did track the 150' asteroid that gave Earth a fly-by. NASA also tracks over 90% of asteroids that are big enough to cause "extinction events".Earth has had 7 of those events, where almost all life on the planet was extinguished.
We desperately need a meteor event to take out Texas. Many are sick and tired of those ignorant redneckers and want to re-claim our oil and mineral rights that big oil has stolen from American citizens.
HUH? So you desperately want another meteorite to hit Alaska because of its huge reserves of oil and gas. Or maybe Minnesota due to their huge deposits of iron ore. Of course, you know, that that would be an extinction event larger than the one that left a 320 mile crater on the edge of Antarctica.
Keep posting, tracontech, America needs something to laugh at.
Steve, the airburst/sonic boom is what caused the damage in Russia, but fragments of the meteor did in fact hit the ground afterwards. They simply weren't big enough or fast enough to cause a crater forming event. Had the Russian meteorite or the Tunguska asteroid entered the atmosphere more vertically they may have impacted with enough force to cause a crater.
Palebluedot
Ty, but I said the meteor over Russia airburst between 15 and 32 miles above ground, or 75000 to 160000 feet above ground. There was a delay between explosion and the shock wave hitting the ground because of the physical distance it travelled (and, I suspect, by exploding that high, the force of the airborne shock-wave was lessened by the ultra thin air that high).
The Tunguska event has been carefully studied, especially after WWII. A Russian physicist was looking at the Hiroshima atomic airburst site and recognized the charred vertical trees directly below the explosion as identical to those in Tunguska. He did many experiments trying to figure out what type of material had airburst over Tunguska, the rate of entry and the height of the explosion. He had aerial photos of the butterfly shape of the felled trees, with all of the trees west of the epicenter pointing west. His conclusions were that it was a comet, entering our atmosphere at 45 degree angle that airburst 5 miles above the ground. There is interesting film of his experiments recreating the butterfly shape, how much force it required and how fast the comet was traveling. I saw it on the History channel, so it is in their archives.
tracontech; Texans are not rednecks, they are Texacans; different group; hard working, richest state in the Union, one of the two financial centers of America, number one medical complex in America(st.Lukes in Houston), oil center of America, largest beef producer, and top notch food; , you should go visit Texas, you would change your attitude very fast.
............... and the seas will boil.
fire will rain from the sky.
there will be great floods and famine
Wars , plagues and swarms of locust.
Dogs and cats will fornicate.
tracontech,
we here desperately need a meteor to hit you, and you only.
btw, those evil rich pay mighty fine royalties for land owners mineral rights
Saxon. many people think anyone not living in New York, Boston , San Fran or D.C. is a redneck.
Candy............. are you married to Wilson?
I know a bit about electronics and magnetism, among other things.
I've felt for years that what everyone's missing in the recent alignment of things is this...
1. alignment with the center of galactic force caused 'currents' of various energies which were suddenly and powerfully, though temporarily aligned
2. this, necessarily would have effects on things in space that are small enough to be affected by such energies to change direction into the path of such energies
What is the essential composition supposed or known about objects in meteor events? Metalic
Duh... remember magnets and iron filings toys? What do you think will happen to a chunk of metal in a vacuum or other closed environment when magnetic, electo-magnetic or other related energies come in contact with it? Will it sit there and smile at you like the face on the toy or will it move with the forces like the iron filings follow the magnet?
Think about it!
There's lots of it out there... and we just happen to be in the way of some of it.
I'll betcha there's more comin', too! Pray ... hard
It was a 10 ton meteor, not 10,000 ton.
Kallie - NASA knows a lot more than you know.
saxon - "Texacan" is not listed in the dictionary, Einstein. People in the state of Texas are Texans.
I think Saxon was implying that most of us living in Texas came from Mexico... and combining us as such. Which is basically true. Texacons... has a nice red and brown sound to it.
Do they not teach 4th grade science any longer? That's about the level of this article and video and many of the comments here aren't even up to that level.
I am getting a little nervous at how many of these are entering the atmosphere lately.
I thought that most of these were tracked by NASA.
PRober - I thought of that, but he spelled it "Texacan", not "Texacon". More likely, he meant to imply that Texas is full of Republicans, hence "Texacan". Either way, he is only showing his ignorance.
i haven't seen superman today...so it must have been kryptonite...
ABCxyz, Texacan, as I know it, is a portmanteau (combination of words) of Texas and Mexican.
tracontech
10,000 tons of meteorites hit the Earth every year. The VAST majority of these are incredibly small, as in grains of sand. WE will never have the capability of finding and tracking everything, it is only the really big stuff that we even need to worry about anyway.
A meteors speed is measured in miles per SECOND. By the time you saw it coming you wouldn't even have time to turn around let alone make to any shelter.
prplbeedo; you got it; there are Spanish and Mexican Spanish family's thAT have been in Texas since the middle 1700's; many old and prominent family's throughout the state of Texas; Hispanic is a different culture, it is part Indian and Spanish; if you ever travel throughout Texas you will hear many people refer to themselves as Texacan, proud people with a proud culture; warning ,DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS !
>Kallie: Within 12 hours of DA14 there were two major meteorites that caused damage ( Russia , Cuba)
>and three large meteors (California, Florida, Middle east)... ...it drives me crazy when NASA keeps putting
>out statements like "these events are not related"... ...These incidents were related (lex parsimoniae)
Kallie, yes, Occam's Razer often is correct - BUT not always. It might 'feel' that they are somehow related because DA14 and the Chelyabinsk event happened on the same day, but that's just an emotional response to a unlikely coincidence. Likewise, the California and Florida meteors might not have even hit the news, except that the DA14 and Chelyabinsk events made any other moderate meteors a front-page news story.
It's basic Newtonian Physics - and NASA is very good at the math. :) They know where these objects came from, what speed, direction, spin, mass, composition, etc - and they therefore they know they were all unrelated, random events - not connected to each other in any way, other than coincidence.
>Kallie: ...but NASA is able to predict very little anymore. They are useless .
Humans have only really been trying to track and map and catalog these objects for a very short time. It's a process, and it's not even just NASA's responsibility. Canada is launching two Satellites Monday (google for NEOSSat) to help search for rogue asteroids, so don't worry, we Canadians will save the world. :)
Saxon you're wrong. Texas isn't the highest earning state. California has the highest GDP in the nation, texas being second. Look it up.
I saw what I think was an asteroid that narrowly missed hitting the earth around 1951-2. I have reason to think that it went through the upper fringes of the atmosphere.
The really interesting thing about it was that it went almost directly over a military operation in progress. They said that they had radar and people on sentry duty all that night and that nothing went over!
18 different groups of people reported seeing it! I was not one of them, this was in the flying saucer days and if you admitted seeing any thing, you were labeled crazy. Do you imagine that I believe anything that the government says? Would you?
Is there any of you that remember "Operation Longhorn", a paratrooper maneuver, in central Texas? If so, I wonder what they told you to say? There were thousands of troops involved.
I laughed when I saw the drawing of the paths in the video. The eighteen groups that reported the one I saw, had it going in many different directions and many different colors, none of which matched what I had seen. We humans are poor observers, does not mean that we didn't see something.
The Martians are coming! The Martians are coming! H.G.Wells nailed it! :-)
And it was reported elsewhere (NBCNews is always behind the curve) that Egypt is now being plagued with million's of locusts that are destroying crops! Israel has issued warnings!
meteors and locusts? Sign of the apocalypse?
That's it. Keep looking up.
look...a flock of pigeons...splat...
Who really knows? But like the old saying. "Look up, look down, look at my thumb, you are really dumb." I'm sure it isn't the first time we have had space junk come close or even hit planet earth, nor will it be the last.
Here's your sign.
sign says...i'm dumber than a flame'n falling rock...
I think a lot of the fireballs are falling space junk put up there by us.
Aluminum Oxide is a poison.
My money's on Green Lantern. You can laugh and argue, but just remember that the Hulk can't fly.
He can fall.
These are not the result of "space junk" falling from the sky. Literally tons of cosmic dust and meteorites enter Earth's atmosphere each day. Google is your friend... But seriously, meteor showers occur regularly throughout the year, some more spectacular than others. If you have never gone to a dark-sky area to watch a meteor shower, you are missing out--make a picnic and bring the kids. Drink lots of coffee and have some lounge chairs or blankets to lie down on so you won't strain your neck. Almost every meteor will cause you to "oooh" and "ahhh" because they are so beautiful, and you will see fireballs if you spend some time at it.
I dunno....Green Lantern just makes more sense.
true there are "fireballs" every day...however there are not meteorites every day and there were three in a 12 hour span.( Cuba, Russia, middle east) That is different. Two of these caused injury and damage.
(btw: I am getting different reports on the one in the middle east --no country is reported it just says "middle east" )
Only the Russian one caused damage. The "middle east" one you can't seem to identify any more than that, and the supposed Cuban one caused no damage, but wasn't seen by anybody outside of Cuba. I think you need to recheck your tinfoil hat, because you appear to be missing some key information.
Also, are you insane? There are literally millions of meteorites that occur every day. Get a grip on reality.
Kallie - you do realize that a meteorite can appear as a fireball as it is falling to Earth, right? And honey, there are meteorites that strike the Earth on a regular basis. Just because they are not all 10 tons and hit somewhere in the desert or ocean where no one sees them does not mean that they don't strike every day. Please educate yourself with the facts before posting.
Woodrat-
Nah, too many of the posters on here obviously thrive on things to worry about. The fact that they know nothing about science, math, politics, history - you name it - doesn't stop them from pontificating on anything and everything, and sounding so definite about it! Most use fireball, meteor, asteroid, or space junk interchangeably and further expose their lack of knowledge as well as their susceptibility to wild rumors and snake oil salesmen.
I guess seeing their silly monikers appearing in front of millions of people gives them their only chance at five seconds of fame. My advice: just read the article and keep your conclusions to yourself.
About 100 tons of space stuff hit the earth's atmosphere every day. Almost all of it burns up, but a few will land on the surface as meteorites. The rest settles down as dust.
dksouthern
I've stopped really attacking people for being uninformed. If they want to discuss, and then correct and update their knowledge as they learn, well that's a good thing. People don't deserve to be attacked for being uneducated, they deserve to be educated by those who are more in the know.
It's only when people repeatedly use their posts to propagate obvious falsehoods that serve their agenda - that they deserve to be attacked for it.
But to say people should just keep their observations or ideas to themselves? We've got free speech here and I feel more people should use it. The only way to evolve your positions is to participate. So Kallie, thanks for contributing your thoughts. I hope you learned a little something about meteors.
Really NBC, you fell for this scam? "Southern California Weather Authority is run by scam artist, Kevin Martin. He is NOT a Meteorologist, nor does he have any photographers working for him. He has been busted many times releasing stolen and photoshopped pictures to the media. You really should do a little more research into a news story before you release it. I bet if you did your jobs properly and investigated, you would discover that the photographers name you wrote about is even a made up name.
They WANT you to think they're meteors. Truth is they are obamadrones murdering some American citizen.
La Cucaracha, no tiene marijuana que fumar.
wes-613172 You are one sick person.
Ignore him. He is a troll searching for attention.
you know if it's on the internet it's got to be...
is this the new way Obama gets the illegals into America now, it must look green because they are all holding their new green cards and you know how many live under 1 roof, imagine how many green cards are shining bright in this spacecraft......
This is a sign of worse things heading our way and falling from the sky. Coincidence? I don't think so. If we had a calendar that would had been synchronized with the Mayan calendar, which is not seconds, but months,( It really wasn't Dec 22 2012, like we were told) then we could all be looking at dooms day. But, don't worry, sleep in peace, and live your life like nothing is going to happen. It is better to die, while we will never know what hit us, than to live in agony, anticipating when the big one will be here. By the way, NASA will never tell us, even if they knew.
Doug - get a life.
well if i tell you the truth...don't freak out...july the forth don't be surprise to seen fire in the sky...
so they couldn't just like up the equinoxes and solstices with the eclipses and compare it to our calendar and observations? what about the Venus transit? that only happens every 117 years or something like that... i think the last age passed already man....
You're as dumb as a rock,,, it was Dec. 21 not the 22. DUH!
Can I read ANY article these days where some jackass DOESN'T mention President Obama. Geez. I sure miss intelligent article banter....
NARAIT, it would be so nice if we could gather all the Jackasses in the world and put em in one spot on earth, and let one meteorite selectively wipe em out from earth, like the dinosaurs.
intelligent conversation doesn't mean talking about ficticious dinosaurs, good grief, get in reality. I do like your idea of getting all those "jackasses" in 1 place though, assuming you mean the liberals.
Roger - are you saying dinosaurs did not exist?
My guess is ..... they didn't get a mention in the bible sooooo Roger thinks.... yes they did not exist.
I don't know who made all those bones people find !!! IT"S A Miracle !!!!!
It's only because Obama is an illegal born in Africa and raised in Indonesia. His amnesia and fraud ID (SS#) is appalling.
intelligent conversation bout a falling rock...that's took probably billions of years to get here...ain't gon'a happen...we're dumber than rocks...this is the vine...
yes I am saying that dinosaurs DID NOT EXIST.
just because they have found large bones and find them in different locations and fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle does not make them real.
There HAS NEVER been a full skeleton found in 1 location, so am I the only one to read between the lines?
I am not a religeous man and don't believe in dinosaurs, but it is as great a tale as religeon.
both designed for the almighty dollar.
Roger,
What I find amazing about your denial of the existence of dinosaurs is that it seems to only serve the purpose of being contrary. You have no reason not to believe, i.e. your denial isn't based on religion, and there seems to be plenty of evidence for their existence (by plenty i mean overwhelming).
Either that, or you're a conspiracy nut.
Chicken Little - "the sky is falling, the sky is falling".
OBOY! All the doomsday nutbags are gonna build bigger bunkers and buy more ammo!
Can't buy ammo. The government keeps buying it all.
The shelves are empty. they are buying up all types.
Why would the gov. be buying .22 cal. rounds?
How do they even have money to be hoarding ammo?
Blutowski 0.0 - are you even capable of writing without double spacing between sentences?
hey...he's style'n...obnoxiously but he's style'n...
ABCDICK What the hell does my writing style have to do with anything?
Its them darn Aliens, everyone keeps looking for, their trying to take us out, and then rule the world without us!
hmmmmm......that's 4 in about a week. hmmmmm.....
4 fairly big ones. and they are not all coming from the same direction.
It's a miracle no one died in the Russian one.
It had the strength of 10 atom bombs. Blew up right in front of them and not one death.
I would think a car crash or heart attack would have at least killed some one.
If I was a superstitious/paranoid speculator, I'd say that most of the commentors here are from outer space, given the rock solid stupidity of the comments. Look, idiots, meteors are typically rock or metal (typically iron/nickel) and some have ice (typically comets). They exist, they're out there in space. Sometimes larger ones cross the Earth's orbital path just as the Earth get's there, then we see "fireballs". However, multiple thousands hit the Earth's atmosphere every day. Most are very small and create very little "fire" and about half you wouldn't see anyway due to daylight. You can see many every night if you just stand outside long enough and away from city lights. And, 'tards, it has to be a clear night. Pretend you're in your car driving. Up ahead you see a rain shower and you drive through it, raindrops hit your windshield ... same thing. You're riding on the Earth. It goes through meteor showers. Get a brain.
And, for you superstitious/paranoid speculators, meteors are not a portent of anything good, bad or indifferent to come. They're not a US, Israel, CIA, Mossad, Communist or Zionist plot to turn us all into cabbage eating zombie slaves. They are not WMD's from North Korea, Russia or China. They're not even Mohammed riding his magic horse through the sky. And, finally, they're not angels bringing more golden tablets and magic underwear to the Mormons. And, I don't give a sh*t what Nostradamus or the Mayans said, meteors are just meteors. Some could be space junk, but so what?
May I suggest finding a sixth grade science book and reading the chapter on astronomy?
You got it...but why call yourself "Pray Hard" if you are good with sixth grade science books? :))
Gringos, even gringo scientists, are full of contradictions! :)) Just kidding...no I am not...just kidding...no I am not...just kidding...no I am not...!
Dr. MS, it seems that six grade science books would stretch the knowledge of the typical poster on science articles here on MSN. "Pray Hard" is a saying in the Bible Belt and also the name of an old Mustang Dragster I used to see in a town in north Texas. "Pray Hard" refers to praying "hard" when one has a real problem, you know, like, "We have to pray hard for Aunt Maud's cancer" or "I've gotta pray real hard so I can pass my GED test", rather like one has to strain hard when one is constipated. And, like same, it involves gritting one's teeth and squinting one's eyes. It's a comical phrase from my perspective. And, as Flannery O'Connor's character, Hazel Motes said, it's a trick on n******. So, there you are. I trust that's at least marginally enlightening.
tracontech:
A cockroach has a built-in defense. He knows that the sound of his body being crushed under someone's boot will make them ill.
Dang Global Warming! I hear Al Gore is developing green energy meteorite proof umbrellas to help fight the effects of "the sky is falling" syndrome. Only $100,000 each. Order now!
Tarzan - you are just too ignorant to realize that the Al Gores jokes and Romney jokes are getting old, aren't you? Time to move along to something else.
Kermit the frog burns up on reentrys, he will be missed and was green till the bitter end!
Meteor 2012 DA14 is 50M in diameter, not 50 feet.
Yeah, and it is not a meteor. It is an asteroid. People who don't know should just shut up and stop misinforming the public (Paul!).
i prefer "rocky space object" or "icey space object" :D
Joe S - They can't shut up. They don't know that they don't know.
Space poopie.
poor california so unstable and now this
Looks like Paul beat me to it, but yeah you need to fix the article 2012 DA14 was not 50ft, there should be a 1 in front of that.
You have to remember that this is NBCNews.com, where writers can't spell or use correct English. How can we expect them to actually get the facts right or edit/proofread before publishing? The worst part is that they continue to get paid no matter how badly or incorrectly written their articles are.
Michael: In his rush to beat you to it, Paul made an error of his own. Maybe he, too, can get a job at NBC. Read it carefully.
The invasion has started, get out your handheld walkie talkies with foil antennas and call Ripley the Alien buster.
Always thought Chicken Little was on to something...